Effective Letter-Writing Guidelines:

First Paragraph: Describe your request with a few adjectives to help them visualize. If possible, tell them what you would like them to protect and how. If there is a bill being considered, provide the name and/or number of the bill and if you want them to vote for or against it. (Use the enclosed Action Alerts or go to the REEF RELIEF Web Site at http://www.blacktop.com/coralforest to get current information on legislation and other actions to protect coral reefs.)

Second Paragraph: Explain what's important about what you want protected. What's special or unique about it? What is its function to humans and/or other species? Tell why it's important to you.

Third Paragraph: Describe what is threatening it. Provide suggestions about how to protect it. If there is a bill, explain how that bill will work for or against protection.

Summarize your ideas and add your personal feelings. Ask again for their support and action.

(Date)

Vice President Al Gore
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, D.C. 2000
Attn: Everglades Point Person

Dear Vice President Gore:

Coral reefs are home to more kinds of life than any other ocean environment. The Florida Keys is home to North America's only living coral barrier reef. It provides abundant commercial and sport fishing, diving, tourism and wilderness experience found nowhere else in North America and is the most visited coral reef in the world.

The 1998 State of the Reef Report by Craig Quirolo of Reef Relief has documented the accelerating decline of coral reefs in the lower Florida Keys and reflects loss of coral cover due to bleaching, nuisance algal over-abundance, storm damage and disease.
Reef Relief, in concert with the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, has begun a coral nursey to stabilize coral fragments that would otherwise not survive due to storm damage. But to save these coral reefs, much more must be done.

To strengthen protection of coral reefs in U.S. waters, President Clinton has issued an Executive Order directing that agencies "ensure that no action they authorize or fund will degrade coal reefs in U.S. waters."

Given this mandate, we encourage you to take the following action:

1. Clean up the Everglades so that agricultural runoff containing nutrients--specifically nitrogen as well as phosphorus, pesticides and mercury do not discharge into Florida Bay and the downstream coral reefs of the Florida Keys. The current Everglades Restudy must include efforts to:

• Reduce agricultural pollution from fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides and top soil loss at the source. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. In recent years, high tissue mercury concentrations in wading birds, fish and top predators such as the Florida phanter in southern Florida and the Water Conservation Areas of the Everglades points to widespread mercury contamination with possible toxic effects that can be transferred up to food chains. (Sepulveda, 1998). The increased water flows out of the Everglades that were intended to reverse the effects of the trend of deteriorating water quality, are, unfortunately making things worse. (See enclosed article from Lapointe and Yentch). Massive algal blooms and severe turbidity have expanded from Central and Western Florida Bay, the "Dead Zone", as a result of increased flows of water and nitrogen through Taylor Slough and Shark River Slough. During the same period a host of new coral diseases have spread at Keys coral reefs. Purple sea fans and possibly other sealife is being attacked by a land-based fungus found only in top soil, the aspergillus fungus.
• Indentify strategies for reducing both phosphorus and nitrogen loading to waters of Florida Bay and the Florida Keys in recognition of the fact that the nutrient thresholds for coral reefs are lower than previously acknowledged. Dr. Brian Lapointe (Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution) and Dr. Peter Bell (University of Queensland) have critically reviewed case studies from around the world and have established that biologically diverse coral reef ecosystems cannot tolerate nutrient levels that exceed 1 uM dissolved inorganic nitrogen and 0.1 uM soluble reactive phosphorus. The increasing discharges of agricultural runoff and inadequately treated sewage containing elevated nitrales and phosphates into Florida Bay and the Florida Keys is a principle contributor to the demise of Florida's coral reefs. The coral reefs are suffocating from massive algal blooms. Coral coverage, abundance and health have all declined. Visibility has dropped as sedimentation has increased and Florida Bay's Dead Zone continues to export nutrient-laden run-off to the downstream coral reefs. Despite years of protection as a no-take zone for fisheries at Looe Key, this reef has experienced a 44% loss of coral cover between 1984 and 1991 (per James Porter--Un- Ga). The Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary Water Quality Protection Program is spending millions of dollars a year on studies but we must do more.
• Protect puplic health by dedicating funding to the improvement of sewage infrastructure in the Florida Keys. Numerous studies have proven that existing septic systems, cesspits and package plants with injection wells permit wastewater leachate to enter nearshore waters in a matter of hours once discharged into the porous limestone substrata of the Florida Keys. State standards are woefully inadequate in protecting puplic health and the offshore coral reefs from this source of harmful nutrient loading. Public beaches and harbors in the Keys that have been tested contain high fecal coliform counts. How long before we must close these beaches to the public? Nearshore waters have already reached eutrophic levels and regional blooms of toxic red tides were experienced in 1994-95. Recent studies indicate that coral bleaching can be caused by high levels of vibrio bacteria in the water column. Last year, corals in the Lower Florida Keys experienced extended and widespread bleaching indicating that bleaching is not just due to high sea temperatures. This was followed by heavy rains and a wet winter that dramatically decreased visibility throughout the winter months, further continuing the stress on the corals.

It's time to act. The technology exists to remove reduce nutrient loading from sewage and agricultural runoff. Let's dedicate funding to this purpose rather than just studying the reef to death. We encourage you to support efforts to accomplish these goals.

Very truly yours,

Name
Address